


Pretty Much the Same Thing

by Rivestra



Category: The Tomorrow People (2013)
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Growing Partnership, Telepathy, Touch Telepathy, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:12:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivestra/pseuds/Rivestra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The CDC does not approve of the term “Zombies.” They point out, at great length, that no flesh is being eaten, and that fantastical terms like this will only incite panic. Everyone uses the term anyway. </p>
<p>They’re right about it not calming people down<br/>...and nobody seems to remember that there’s more than one way to eat a brain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty Much the Same Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LithiumDoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LithiumDoll/gifts).



> **Spoilers:** Set somewhere in the middle of the series' run  
>  **Warnings:** Zombie-style graphic violence
> 
> **Disclaimer:** Written purely for fun; no profit or harm intended. All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners.
> 
> A million thanks to my betas three: [the newbie,](http://archiveofourown.org/users/celophanejedi) [the guilty,](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Varkelton) and [the _extremely_ contraindicated](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SnarkGoddess). You all rock!

\---------

Charlotte disappeared on a sunny Tuesday.

The sunny bit’s not really important, not to anyone but John. John remembers because when he looked toward the door of the exhibit, he needed to shield his eyes to see anything at all, much less Charlotte. She looked up at him from the display case she was peering raptly into, every inch just another excited kid for once. She managed a cheerful wave at him before her gaze was drawn back down. John dropped his hand and headed for her, losing her again in the glare.

By the time he reached the display case, she was gone. No matter how hard John projected, he couldn’t find her. He couldn’t catch even a hint of her.

He still can’t.

\---------

On Wednesday night, Charlotte reappears in Grand Central Station.

She’s wearing stiff new clothes and has absolutely no memory of anything after waving at John. She’s also disoriented and projecting panic so loudly it’s making the normals around her edgy. A dozen or so of them have gathered around her by the time John gets to her, and the rest are streaming around the group, trying their damndest to pretend she didn’t exist.

She gloms onto John immediately, and he gets her the hell out of there.

\------------

Thursday, the news runs a human interest bit about a new strain of what they’re calling “aggressive Mononucleosis” that’s cropping up throughout Manhattan. All over the city, hundreds of exhausted, moody people are ushered into Emergency Departments by their loved ones.

The doctors send them home with instructions to drink lots of water and get plenty of rest.

\---------

That doesn’t really help.

\---------

By Saturday, the city’s under quarantine, though no one’s quite sure what they think they’re containing. By this point, thousands of cases have been reported all up and down the Eastern Seaboard and a few as far away as Los Angeles.

At noon, the mayor issues a shelter-in-place mandate, but it doesn’t seem to really effect the aimless crowds gathering all over the city.

\---------

That night, Cara notices that they’re low on batteries. Things are weird enough above that she’s hesitant, but when you live underground, batteries can make all the difference. She takes John and Travis with her to make a run.

They’re after-hours regulars at this particular warehouse club. The neighborhood’s trendy and crowded, but that doesn’t really matter when you can teleport directly inside. There’s only ever a single night watchman on duty, and usually it’s a twenty-year-old more interested in whatever’s on the Cartoon Network than in making his rounds.

They land in their usual spot behind a two-story stack of Charmin boxes. Cara’s mind starts reeling the moment they land, and she reaches for John and Travis to hold them back.

Travis shrugs her off, hissing, “Let’s get this done. This place is giving me the willies tonight.” He twists easily out of her grasp and mumbles to himself as he wanders off, “Wouldn’t want the ladies to be without their batteries...” and is around the corner before her head’s stopped spinning enough to talk.

John’s clearly been talking for a while when she finally manages to focus on him. “...Cara? Are you hurt? What’s going on?” He’s starting to sound distressed.

She takes her weight back from him, not responding until she’s standing on her own. “I’m okay,” she says, voice as unsteady as the rest of her.

“Are you sure?” His question is muted like she’s hearing him from underwater, under pressure, even. Gripping her shoulders, John turns her to face him and peers into her eyes. “Because we really should follow Travis. I know this should be a milk run, but...”

“Yeah,” she says, shaking out the kinks and tightening her shields until everything dies down to just a faint background thrum. “I don’t like him alone tonight, either.”

The batteries are six aisles over. As they’re passing the fifth aisle, John points out the emergency exit, blocked open by the dark bulk of something long and knee-high against it.

Surprised to find she’s locked her shields down so far she can’t speak directly into John’s mind, Cara leans into him and whispers, “A new guard out for a smoke?” into his ear. It’s a theory, but she doesn’t believe it.

He shrugs and draws her deeper into the shadows behind a pallet of car wax. They wait. They listen.

There’s a dragging sound coming from up ahead, then the distinctive smack of flesh into metal. The shelf shudders behind Cara’s back.

John whispers incredulously, “What the hell did Travis find that he needs to drag back?” and then he darts out to go see for himself.

Millennia of evolution keep Cara frozen in place. The fragments getting through her shields insist she run, teleport out, away, _anywhere,_ but she’s not about to leave her partners. Instead, she tightens her shields down further and follows John.

As she turns the corner, John shouts, “Cara! Stay back!” just as a case of canned corn bursts down onto her from the shelf above her head. It takes her down to the cement floor and pushes all the breath from her lungs.

When she can breathe again, she’s sure she must be seeing things--her head’s spinning badly enough it’s certainly possible--but there actually _are_ people everywhere.

She watches numbly as John kicks a man down the aisle, knocking over two others with the impact. John turns away again immediately and yanks another man up off the floor. That man struggles violently, reaching back for the dark shape John’s pulled him from.

Cara’s made it up to her hands and knees before she realizes that the dark shape is _Travis._ It takes another moment for her to make out the blood on the struggling man and the corresponding _hole_ in Travis’ abdomen. The man is elbow deep _inside Travis._ Horror sneaks up on her and lurches forward, and she abruptly loses everything in her stomach.

Wiping bile from her chin, she sees Travis off to her left--what’s left of Travis, anyway--and her mind skitters away to search frantically for John. She can’t find him in the dim warehouse, not through all the people just... standing, watching this happen, in the aisle with them.

She’s trying to pull herself upright when a hand lands on her calf, and the shock of it flattens her back to the floor.

For a fraction of a second, Cara can feel a pull from that spot, like something vital in her is rushing out to meet that grip--then she simply shuts down. Every muscle in her body locks up except those in her throat. Her world grays out; she can’t hear her own screams as her mind spirals down behind its deepest, most primal shields, leaving her body defenseless on the painted concrete floor.

\---------

When they become too many, John has to face the fact that he’s about to get himself killed trying to protect a dead man. He abandons Travis and heads for high ground.

From a gap between pallets of green beans, he watches them tear into Travis’ body. They rip into his belly with their bare hands, scrappling with each other to get the best angle to go deep under Travis’ skin. They slip clumsily on his blood where its flooding the aisle, but hold tightly to his body. The closest-in ones, the ones who’ve burrowed deepest, have strangely blissed-out expressions on their strikingly clean faces.

John has to turn away when a one of the group, blocked by others from a spot at the belly like a second-tier lion, turns her attention to Travis’ _face,_ digging her fingers deep into his eye sockets _._ Vomiting on them would probably be a very good way to focus their attention on himself.

As loudly as he can, John sends, _Time to go, Cara. Jump!_ but doesn’t feel her acknowledge him. He knows she’d needed to shield heavily tonight, so he pushes down his panic.

Off to his left, the warehouse gets dimmer and quieter beyond the throng around what remains of Travis. The standing, shuffling people increase to his right, making it hard to see that way as well. John catches a glimpse of Cara’s face just as she goes down again, a woman’s hand grabbing at her calf. The woman’s face breaks into an ecstatic grin as Cara starts to scream.

John feels himself hitting the ground in a roll before he’s fully made the decision to jump. He comes up fifteen feet and a sea of bodies away from Cara and her attacker.

Three heads turn toward him right away; he shoves #1 into #2, but #3 can’t be more than eleven years old, and John hesitates.

The girl gets a grip on John’s belt and slides a hand up under his shirt. John stumbles and nearly goes down as her hand hits his skin, his world narrowing sharply to a sick slide as everything he is starts to rush toward that spot of contact. The kid smiles as she digs into his stomach with her nails.

When she rips through his skin, the rush turns into a tsunami surging out of him. Exhaustion rolls over John, and his knees buckle. The girl follows him down, her fingers digging ever deeper, and John just lets her, too drained to push her away.

Fading fast, John watches motionless as another man lumbers toward him. The guy stumbles barely a foot away and crashes awkwardly to the floor without trying to save himself at all. The blood the man’s slipped on splashes up across John’s face, into his mouth, making him cough weakly.

It’s Travis’ blood, John realizes--maybe _Cara’s_ blood--and he’s breathing it in, passively choking on it while she’s dying a few feet away.

It’s pure adrenaline that gets him moving again, born of desperation and self-loathing. His heart pounds loudly in his chest as he yanks the girl’s fingers out of his belly. The wet _snap_ of her arm sickens him, but he doesn’t let it stop him from shoving her away. She doesn’t even whimper as she hits the shelves with a _crunch,_ just flops around in an effort to stand again despite an obviously broken spine.

John’s head starts to clear almost as soon as he’s free of the girl. He bull-rushes through the people between him and where he hopes Cara still is. They brush against him, grabbing at him, and he feels each touch like ice, sapping the warmth from his skin and pulling at something much deeper. He pushes them off, but there always seem to be more coming.

One man gets a good grip on his shirt, but it’s already torn. John shrugs one arm out of it and the rest lets go. The guy crashes backward, landing on a pile of others already on the ground. They’re hunched over something, and the new one twists to join them in their groping almost as soon as he’s down.

A woman crashes into John’s now-bare back, and it’s like being hit with a cattle prod, if the shock came with a wave of crushing fatigue. He tries to throw her off, but he can barely bring his arms up to try and push ineffectually at her. Behind her, John sees the man he threw off a moment ago shove a larger man easily out of his way. The writhing bodies part in his wake, and John sees a familiar pair of boots under the pile. He lunges for them, diving in headfirst.

All he can think is _home._

\---------

On the monitor, a man is crawling across a parking lot, dragging his legs behind him. A woman with her child thrust behind her cowers in the corner ahead. Another woman lumbers in from the left and grabs the child by the arm. The anchor’s face reappears as the kid starts screaming.

“Once again,” the obviously flustered anchor says, “this footage was live an hour ago, right here on 7th Street.” The camera pans to her co-anchor who nods gravely at her. “It was captured by a security camera in the parking lot. As we watch it again, notice...”

Stephen clicks it off in frustration and turns back to the papers spread on the table before him.

Sighing, he grumbles at the ceiling, “Okay, TIM, do I list editor or publishing house first for academic papers?” then thinks, _Why the heck am I bothering with this now?_ and slams his binder shut, flinging his pencil toward the wall.

It bounces off John’s materializing back instead, and is coated with John’s blood by the time it hits the floor.

“What the...” Stephen shouts as he rushes over. John’s not moving; he’s barely even breathing. Stephen doesn't realize John’s not alone until he’s turning him over, and he can’t hold in his gasp when he spots Cara’s too-pale face beneath.

He yells, “Motherfucker!” when she grabs his shirt, and he crab walks frantically backwards, hands slipping on the blood covering them. He’s been watching too much news.

(Everyone has.)

His heart’s hammering so loudly, he almost misses Cara’s whispered, “Don’t touch us,” before she slumps back to the floor, unmoving.

When he looks up, everyone else is watching them from a few feet away.

\---------

It takes thirty-seven stitches to sew the two of them up and a case of 18-year old Glenfiddich Scotch to get Doc. Ferguson to even look at them.

There’s nothing they have (anybody has) that’s worth the cost of antibiotics, and the doc insists they’d be a total waste in this case anyway. The injured are contaminated, period. John and Cara are as good as gone.

Stephen pulls the prescription from the doc’s mind and steals the pills from Ultra’s infirmary. (It’s easier than he expects; the jammers are down and he gets in and out without seeing any one at all.)

\---------

The CDC does not approve of the term “Zombies” and points out, at great length, that no flesh is being eaten, and that fantastical terms like this will only incite panic.

Everyone uses the term anyway. They’re right about it not calming people down.

\---------

It’s late Monday, and John and Cara still haven’t woken up.

Stephen got his mom and Luca out last night, upstate, along with their neighbor’s 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly, without whom Luca had flat-out refused to leave. Stephen didn’t stay around for their shock at the teleport, but he did talk to his mom briefly this morning and they were safe, for now at least. She didn’t even ask him any questions.

He wasn’t able to find Astrid. The news is reporting that a lot of people are in shelters or stranded far from home. Most of the city is overrun with the infected. She must have found someplace to go to ground. (She _must have._ )

Stephen tries to keep the others away from John and Cara, but refuses to stay away himself. There’s no point; he was covered in their blood before he even knew what was going on.

Dozing fitfully in his chair, he counts their slow, shallow breaths. He feeds them pills when he’s supposed to and watches their pale, unmoving faces.

He locks himself in with them and spends the entire night _waiting._

\---------

The thing is, all the news outlets agree on one thing: Exposure to infection only takes a few hours.

\---------

Early Tuesday morning, Stephen crawls into the bed with them. He’s running on fumes and instinct, and he’s very, very tired.

He’s also pretty sure he’s signing his own death warrant when he carefully opens his mind as completely as he can and settles down in between them.

Falling asleep is like being consumed by the bed while it falls into a whirlpool.

\---------

No one is more surprised than Stephen when John wakes him up with coffee early that afternoon. John’s moving very stiffly, but there’s color in his face again, and he tries to snatch the coffee back when Stephen tells him his aches are just old age.

Their tussling doesn’t wake Cara. She hasn’t woken up yet at all yet, but they’re trying not to worry. At some point this morning, she spooned up against Stephens’ back, and she no longer feels so desperately _wrong_ to either of them.

Stephen is still riding the win when he calls his mom; she and Luca are fine, but Luca had to put a bullet into Kimberly's head.

\---------

They don’t get sick, not a one of them, not a single Tomorrow Person, so they stop pretending to quarantine themselves. They need supplies, anyway.

John decides someone else can go this time.

\---------

They watch the news. They pick neighborhoods that haven't been hit hard yet, because those are more likely to still have supplies. They mingle with the crowds and gather tidbits of information to try and piece together what’s actually going on.

Nobody seems to really know much, especially the news. It seems you have to be close to someone showing symptoms to get infected, but it’s not airborne. It’s not blood borne, either; it’s not fluid-borne at all.

The CDC says they can’t figure out how it’s transmitted or where it’s come from.

Nobody believes them.

When they finally announce that the only way to stop one of the infected is to cause massive brain damage, people believe that right away.

\---------

Cara wakes in the low light of the lair, disoriented. She lies stone still, eyes wide and casting about, breath coming quick and tight in her chest. She’s had plenty of nightmares, and, while those may linger, they at least start to fade when she wakes. This... the sense of _wrongness_ flooding her mind now is clearer and sharper than it was when she was asleep.

Something is very, very wrong.

John’s beside her on the bed, snoring lightly. As she sits up, she feels his hand slide down into her lap, leaving behind a ghost of its warmth on the skin of her stomach. He’s a reassuring presence along her side, but it’s not enough to settle her.

It takes her a long moment to notice Stephen on the far side of the bed, his bare chest curled into John’s bare back. She stares at them, completely relaxed into each other, both sound asleep, and finds she’s not actually surprised to find either of them there. Far more important at the moment is that neither seems disturbed by whatever’s crawled under her skin.

Stephen’s unmarked, at least as far as she can see in the dimness, but there’s a large bandage covering John’s side, and his torso is mottled green and purple and streaked with deep angry scratches. She ghosts her fingers over the livid bruise purpling John’s cheek, and he turns into her hand. For a moment, she lingers against his jaw, forgetting the urgency of the moment before.

She draws away from them slowly, careful not to wake them. As she stands, her abs pull against a bandage over her ribs. She looks down and there’s fresh blood seeping through the gauze; it’s not enough to worry about, so she doesn’t. That quick look at her skin tells her that John’s not the only one mottled with bruises, though, and her mind helpfully flashes on a full case of canned corn bursting above her head. _Right, the warehouse,_ she thinks.

She stands and stretches, finding her muscles stiff enough to suggest she’s been out for quite a while. Her movements are slow and methodical, but her heart’s racing. As she rubs at her eyes with shaking hands, TIM’s disembodied voice asks, “Are you well, Cara?” softly over his speakers.

It takes her until that moment to notice that they’ve dragged a bed into the room next door to the control room and taken it over. She doesn’t answer TIM until she reaches his panels, and then only with a distracted “ ‘m fine.”

Eyes closed, Cara stands barefoot in the middle of the room for a long moment, reaching out for the wrongness. Eventually, she looks down at her watch. It’s yet another moment before she asks quietly, “TIM, can you confirm the time for me, please?”

“Certainly.” The pause is slight before he continues, “The atomic clocks in Boulder, London, and Bern all confirm that your watch is functioning perfectly. It is indeed 8:15 am.”

The press of minds from the city above should be nearly deafening with her shields down at this time of the morning, but it’s not. Rubbing the back of her neck, Cara mutters, “So where is everybody?” to herself. Before TIM can answer her, she asks more loudly, “Can you give me a visual on the Plaza directly above us?”

TIM’s monitors flicker to life. “Of course, Cara,” he says in his usual bland tones. His screens show the plaza full of the expected commuters, but there are too many, and they’re milling, aimless, instead of striding purposefully across the square.

Cara stares at the screen almost blankly, transfixed. Tentatively, she sends _John?_ and receives back a faint, _Cara?_ tinged with exhaustion. She gives herself a little shake and pulses _sleep_ back along the link at him. In the other room, he rolls over and snuffles into her pillow.

Her eyes are drawn right back to the scene on the monitors, though, and she stares at the people. She reaches her hand out for a woman’s face when it gets near the camera. Entranced, Cara whispers, “Why can’t I hear you?” as her fingers connect with the glazed eyes of the woman on the screen.

\---------

Up on the monitors, Cara appears in the plaza. She’s in the same white tank she’d been sleeping in, but has pulled on John’s sweats and her sneakers. The timestamp shows 8:20 am, Friday morning.

For a moment--11 seconds by TIM’s counters--she just stands there.

It’s grainy, low-resolution surveillance footage without audio, but there’s really no mistaking it: At 11.27 seconds in, Cara starts to scream.

Every head in the plaza has turned toward her by 12.00 seconds. By 15.00 seconds, Cara is down, arms wrapped around her head, curled into a ball under the weight of the people piling on top of her.

John can’t see her at all by 21 seconds in. He keeps watching, hands balled into fists, the muscles in his arms bulging.

At 1 minute, 25 seconds, a white van pulls into the plaza. It heads straight for Cara, running over anyone in its path without hesitation. At 1:50, the van disgorges six people in yellow biocontamination suits with dark visors. They pull Cara free from her attackers and into the van. She doesn’t resist. She doesn’t move at all.

By 2 minutes, 10 seconds, they’re all gone.

John slams his fists into the rack and demands tightly, voice hoarse, “Play it again, TIM.”

\---------

The van, it turns out after TIM has time to analyze all the angles, has a parking pass for the main lot used by Ultra’s staff on its rear bumper.

\---------

Stephen wants to go straight in, just barrel into Ultra the moment they figure out that’s where she is. He was there just a few days ago, and he swears to John that it’s empty.

John points out that if it’s empty, then that’s probably not where they took Cara, and turns his attention back to TIM and the blueprints they’ve found.

\---------

Around dusk, TIM announces that Astrid has made her way into the tunnels and appears to be looking for a way in.

Stephen is so relieved, he’s shaking with it. He knocks his full mug of coffee into the sheaf of papers he’s been going through. By the time he’s gotten them out of harm’s way, John is long gone.

\---------

Astrid is wearing night vision goggles.

This made sense when John found her in the dark tunnels, but he’s teleported her into the lair, and she’s still not taking them off. She’s also refusing to put down her Colt 45.

He puts his hands out, projecting harmlessness as hard as he can. “Astrid, it’s okay,” he says placatingly. “We’re not sick. _None_ of us are sick.”

She just stares at him, so he continues, “We don’t think we can get this.”

It’s hard to tell through the goggles, but she looks relieved. “None of you?” she asks, tremulous, and lowers the gun.

“Not a one,” John confirms, “and it’s not for lack of exposure. We’ve had some pretty close calls, I’m afraid.”

She doesn’t hear that last bit. She’s too busy yelling, “Stephen!” and flinging herself into Stephen’s arms before he’s even fully in the room.

John snatches the 45 out of her careless hands as she passes by. He unloads it quickly and sets it on a shelf, standing its bullets neatly alongside. Then he stands there, watching them awkwardly.

Stephen’s voice is soft, teasing. “So what’s with the headgear?” he asks, tugging lightly at a strap.

“I...” Astrid starts, sounding unsure for the first time since she’s arrived. “I just thought, if it’s not spreading through particles... I mean, its effects are largely cognitive, and there are only so many ways into the brain, so, eyes...”

She shakes her head. “It’s a stupid idea,” she says and reaches for the chin strap dissolutely. “I’ll take it off.”

“Don’t,” Charlotte says, voice sharp from the doorway. John hadn’t even noticed her arrive, but he crosses to her immediately. She’s pale as a ghost, and her fingers are white where she’s gripping the doorway.

She whispers, “The men who had me wore those,” and everyone’s frozen to watch her, so it carries in the quiet room. Her voice flat, Charlotte continues, “They never took them off, not the whole time they...” she trails off and gulps in a ragged breath before dissolving into quiet sobs.

John gathers her into his arms. He has to pry her fingers off the doorway to do it, but she’s shaking so much, it’s not hard. He slides down and pulls her into his lap right there against the door.

Distantly, he hears TIM say, “Miss Finch and Miss Taylor may indeed have a good point. There are only so many ways a contagion may be transmitted and the method this one employs has eluded the foremost authorities to date. It stands to reason that if conventional thought is insufficient to the issue, unconventional ideas should next be considered.”

Astrid’s masked face turns toward the speakers in the ceiling. “Did you just paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, TIM?” she asks, incredulous.

“Indeed,” TIM answers implacably. “One should not throw out a sound approach merely because it originates in fiction, although, I sincerely doubt that Mr. Doyle was the first to posit such an...”

John cuts in, “Your point, TIM?” His head is starting to throb, and, while Charlotte’s cries have quieted, her body is still heaving in his arms.

“Certainly, John,” TIM replies. “Simply, if the gear Miss Finch wears has kept her safe thus far, I would recommend she continue to wear it until we figure out _why.”_

“But we know she’s safe here!” Stephen protests, his head swinging to John for confirmation.

Eyes on Astrid, John swallows thickly. “No,” John corrects, his mind racing. “I think TIM’s point is that we only know _we’re_ safe here.”

\---------

Astrid feels ridiculous, but the goggles stay on.

\---------

Stephen and Astrid are close together on the couch sharing their disaster stories in low tones. She should be all but unrecognizable through the mask, but her body language--the way she talks softly with her hands and leans in so earnestly when she asks a question--would make her identity clear to John with a bag over her head.

John’s pouring over a map and a list of mothballed Ultra resources and trying not to eavesdrop.

He’s failing.

Right now, Astrid’s doing her best to comfort Stephen through the details about his family. John knows he’s been blaming himself for Kimberly’s death, but he hasn’t had a chance to encourage Stephen to talk it out, not with Cara missing.

John surreptitiously watches Astrid lean in, sees her hand falling to Stephen’s thigh as she says, “...so, a few hours after you dropped them at the cabin--a place where they were isolated completely--Kim suddenly starts showing symptoms?” Astrid’s voice is building to a point as she continues, “And they were alone together in your house the whole day before?”

“Yeah,” Stephen replies absently, his eyes tracking the loose strap dangling by her left ear.

If John had a cup of coffee, it would be his turn to drop it. _No!_ his mind shouts desperately.

“Don’t you see?” Astrid cries, shaking a little with her excitement. “Your mom? Your brother? They must be like you!”

Stephen’s eyes go wide and his mouth opens in a slow O. John’s stomach lodges in his throat.

Shaking Stephen by the shoulders, Astrid practically shouts, “You can be together! You can bring them here!”

_Yeah,_ John thinks, wincing at Astrid’s enthusiasm. _But you can’t stay. Not here._

_Not anywhere near **us.**_

\---------

John doesn’t tell Stephen when he finds a likely location in the files; one of them throwing themselves head first into this trap is more than enough.

Stephen’s trying to help, but he’s been useless for hours, torn between Cara’s safety and wanting his family with him right now. They’ve been hearing rumors all day about how dangerous the countryside is getting, and their phones are no longer connecting with the network. John pushes, finally convincing him to go fetch them from the cabin about dawn.

Dawn is the classic time to stage a rescue mission, after all.

\---------

Jedikiah is there waiting for him, of course.

There was really no other way for this to go down, not with Charlotte, with _Cara,_ targeted.

Besides, this? This whole thing has Jedikiah Price written all over it.

\---------

The building is old and crumbling, but the lab below (in true super villain fashion) positively _gleams_ with technology.

John doesn’t bother with stealth and he doesn’t bother with ethics.

The facility’s guard is suspiciously light, so John captures the first one alive and learns that most of them abandoned their posts a few days ago. He offers to leave the man bound until he can come back, but he’s bum-rushed for his trouble, and leaves the man in a spreading pool of blood instead. He doesn’t give any of the others a choice, and Astrid’s 45 is hot against the skin of his back by the time he’s taken the last post.

When Stephen appears behind him, John’s watching Jedikiah through the security monitors for Sublevel 5.

By way of hello, John says, “TIM needs to learn to keep his damn mouth shut.”

“I didn’t think TIM _had_ a mouth,” Stephen replies with a wrinkle of his brow. Then, more brightly, Stephen adds, “Which is good, because you can always disable his microphone, and he won’t be able to plug it back in because,” he flashes a double thumbs up and wiggles them in front of John’s face, “no thumbs.”

John closes his eyes on the scene before him and asks, “Just how much caffeine have you had?” It feels like they’ve all been up for days.

“Probably not enough,” Stephen replies, and just like that, their energy disappears, leaving them staring silently at Jedikiah’s back. The man’s been bent over the same desk since John got here.

Somber, Stephen asks, “Does he know we’re here?”

“I don’t know how he would,” John replies, sighing, “but it sure as hell wouldn’t surprise me. He damn sure knows I’m coming.”

\---------

They’re scouting around the SL-5 lab when they discover that John didn’t get all the guards after all.

John, ahead of him in the lead, turns a corner, and suddenly all Stephen can feel is John’s panic and the press of a personal jamming field like all the Ultra kill teams wear.

Stephen doesn’t think, he follows John around the corner in a low roll, grabs the handle of Astrid’s 45 from where it’s stuck in John’s belt, and shoots the guard in the head.

John stares at him, horrified.

Stephen stares back waiting for his mind to crack and rend, for the blinding agony to start.

Eventually, they move on down the hall, tucking this disgust in with the rest that Jedikiah needs to answer for.

\---------

Cara is bound to an exam table with multi-point medical-grade restraints. She’s wearing the same tank she was in when she was taken, but the sweats and sneakers have disappeared. From his vantage point behind the ventilation screen, John can read the utter exhaustion in her body.

He can also see the suppression cuffs binding her wrists and the blindfold over her eyes.

Jedikiah is leaning into a privacy hood, typing on a keyboard. There’s a pair of some kind of glasses next to the bastard, barely recognizable as sleeker, next-generation cousins of Astrid’s mil-spec night vision. Apparently, night vision and LCDs don’t mix well.

John decides he can’t wait for Stephen to contact him that he’s in position. He honestly doesn’t think they’ll get a better chance. With his mind, he flings the glasses off the table. They wobble and stutter unusually, and then fling themselves into the far wall, shattering. (The building’s jammers had been his first stop after the guards.)

Jedikiah’s up in a flash, eyes screwed shut and going for his gun. John pins him from across the room with a look, but he can tell right away that it’s not a good hold. The room must have some kind of jamming device of its own, and it’s affecting John’s TK. He’s more than a little amazed he’s managed to get it through at all.

John pounds at the grate he’s still stuck behind, but he doesn’t have enough leverage with just his hands, and he there’s no chance he can use his TK on something else without letting Jedikiah go. A teleport’s chancy as hell with the jammers; John won’t be of much use to anyone if he scrambles his brain.

Thinking that perhaps he should have stuck with plan A, John calls to Stephen, _How far out are you?_

_Why?_ Stephen replies suspiciously. _What did you **do?**_

While John’s trying--and failing--to send an answer back to Stephen, his attention falters enough that Jedikiah manages to drop to the floor.

When John doesn’t reply, Stephen adds, _Three minutes._

Even over the link, John can tell Stephen’s breathing hard, but John’s got bigger problems. Now that John can no longer see Jedikiah, the bastard can move again. Determinedly, John turns his attention to the grate.

\---------

Stephen’s pounding on the anti-ballistic glass of the lab doors. Inside, he can see Jedikiah pulling himself up to loom over Cara. She’s struggling, but weakly, and Stephen can sense her weariness from outside in the hall and on the other side of the jammer.

Jedikiah raises a gun and fires blindly toward the grate John’s behind, but misses by a few yards. Clearly frustrated with his blindness, he lowers the weapon to Cara’s head--jamming it in so close, he can’t possibly miss-- and shouts something at the grate. Stephen can’t hear what the bastard’s saying through the glass.

At least, he _shouldn’t_ be able to, but it’s like thinking the thought turned up the gain on his ears, and, suddenly, Stephen can hear his Uncle’s ranting.

“What did you think you’d do, John? Just walk in here and take her back from me?” The laugh Jedikiah lets out is mocking and cruel. _“YOU_ don’t take from _ME!”_

Stephen can feel the burn in John’s arms and the push of his mind as he struggles against the grate. He can feel Cara’s terror at the gun pressing into her ear, can feel the warmth of it and smell the gunpowder in the air.

Louder, Jedikiah shouts, “She’s _mine_ now! You all are! I made you. I **_re_** made you. I’ve _perfected_ you!”

_“You should be thanking me!”_

Rage fills Stephen at the very thought, at his uncle-- _at his father_ \--and it roils up through him. The pressure builds and builds until he feels like he’s about to burst with impotent fury. In the moment he’s absolutely sure it’s going to consume him--that he’s going to let it swallow him whole rather than watch Cara and John die--it finds another path.

As it rushes out of him, Stephen deflates like a balloon, sagging, exhausted to the tile floor of the hallway--but he’s also right there, wound tight with John as John sends the grate flying across the room with the combined power of their minds. He’s right there behind Cara as she uses their strength to rip the blindfold off her off her face telekinetically, despite the suppression cuffs still binding her hands.

John’s still getting his feet under him, but he’s there with John and Cara, too, as she wills Jedikiah to open his eyes. They flare in panic as they meet hers, and satisfaction sings through her.

As one, the three of them block the trigger and rip the gun from his hands. No one is sure who actually sends him flying into the wall.

John kicks him in the head to be sure he’s out. Cara and Stephen are both disappointed that he doesn’t use TK to do it.

They leave Jedikiah there, in the lab. It’s the least they can do. There’s not a soul on the planet who deserves to be a Zombie more.

They collapse the building on top of him as they leave, though. They’re cocky, but not stupid.

\----------

When they get back to the lair, John takes one look at Astrid and Stephen just _knows._ The fact that he’s not even in the room at the time doesn’t seem to matter.

The paperwork they stole from the lab confirms it. There’s absolutely no way she can stay. Even with the goggles, they can’t be sure she’d be safe. Not in a den of carriers.

And she’s already got a small infection brewing in her left eye.

\---------

Like most places, their old neighborhood was hit hard; everyone Astrid knows is turned or gone. It takes them four weeks (and more than a hundred sets of lithium batteries for her goggles) to find her second cousin in Boston. She hasn’t seen him since she was twelve, but, by then, she’s ready to leave.

They transport her to an SUV dealership near her cousin’s place and load her up with supplies. They give her a map to a sanctuary, someplace they’ve checked out from afar.

Stephen can’t watch her drive away; John and Cara do instead, and he buries his face in their shoulders until long after she’s gone.

By that point, even Astrid understands that it’s pretty much the same thing.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> When I saw [LithiumDoll’s](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LithiumDoll) Apocalyptothon request come up as a pinch hit at the tail end of matching, I knew I had to grab it. She said:
>
>>   
>  _I like plotty fics, trending towards gen (mostly because I'm not really shippy as a rule), but if the urge to write character-driven introspective slash hits you, go for it! I don't have any particular squicks and the only thing I tend to edit out when reading is character bashing. On that note, if there's a character you don't like/want to write, please do just leave them out._
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> _Apocalypse-wise, I'm down with the classics (zombies, epidemic, killer robots, aliens), but just as happy to see something new and excitingly murderous. I guess, given the option, I probably err on the side of preferring the good guys win the day and all that, but if dark fic is your happy place, that's equally awesome._
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> _AUs I tend not to be so hot on as a rule, but if you want to do a fusion or crossover between any of the listed fandoms, I would probably build you a shrine._
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> _**The Tomorrow People (2013):** I'd be really interested to see how their powers would help against an apocalypse not of their making, and just as intrigued if they somehow managed to bring one on... _  
> 
> 
> She also requested
>
>>   
>  _**White Collar:** This one makes me giggle inappropriately as well, if for entirely different reasons :P I just. This could either be really amazingly dark or really amazingly funny or totally a combination of both. And I kind of get the feeling that Neal and Peter's and Mozzies definitions of 'Apocalypse' would all wildly differ. And I think Elizabeth would be quietly and efficiently beheading zombies in the background while they argued about it._   
> 
> 
> I love crossovers, and I love White Collar. _I **really** wanted that shrine._ I have 1300 words and a whole heck of a lot of plotting toward that shrine. I _tried!_ Life got really pushy about having other plans for me (in the form of weeks and weeks worth of pneumonia). Technically, this is still a crossover in my mind--there was simply no way to make it coherent without another 5k words _at a minimum._ (It all fits, I swear! See, for a few weeks, just before she turned 18, Elizabeth was John’s foster sister after her parents got in a bad car accident! Alas, Astrid got to wear E’s night vision goggles in this final version...)


End file.
